The King's Highway eBook

What he had heard certainly did surprise Wilton a
good deal; and he did not scruple to say, “You
seem acquainted with every one, I think, and to have
an acquaintance with many of whom I did not know you
had the slightest knowledge.”

“It is so,” answered Green, in a grave
and thoughtful tone, “and yet nothing wonderful.
It is with a man like me as with nature,” he
added with a smile, “we both work secretly.
Things seem extraordinary, strange, almost miraculous,
when beheld only in their results, but when looked
at near, they are found to be brought about by the
simplest of all possible means. You, having lived
but little in the world, and not being one half my
age, yet know thousands of people in the highest ranks
of life that I do not know, though I have mingled
with that rank ten times as much as you have done:
and I know many whom you would think the last to hold
acquaintance with me in these changed times.
You could go into any thronged assembly, a theatre,
a ball-room, a house of parliament, and point me out,
by hundreds, people with whose persons I am utterly
unacquainted, and these would be the greatest men
of the day.

“But I could lay my finger upon this wily statesman,
or that great warrior, or the other stern philosopher,
and could tell you secrets of those men’s bosoms
which would astonish you to hear, and make them shrink
into the ground;—­and yet there would be
no magic in all this.”

Wilton did not answer him in the same moralizing strain,
but strove to obtain some farther information in regard
to his proceedings proposed for the following day.
But neither upon that, nor upon the subject of the
note to Lord Sherbrooke, would Green speak another
word, till, on arriving at the gates of Beaufort House,
he said—­

“Remember High Halstow.”

CHAPTER XXI.

It was night, and the large assembly of persons who
had thronged the palace at Kensington during the day
had taken their departure. Silence had returned
after the noise and bustle of the sunshine had subsided;
scarcely a sound was heard throughout the whole building,
except the porter snoring in the hall. The King
himself had taken his frugal supper, and was sitting
alone in his cabinet with merely a page at the door;
his courtiers were scattered in their different apartments;
and his immediate attendants were waiting in the distant
chambers where he slept, for the hour of his retiring
to rest.

Such had been the state of things for some little
time, when the great bell rang, and the porter started
up to open the door. A gentleman on horseback
appeared without, accompanied by two others, apparently
servants; and the principal personage demanded, in
a tone of authority, “Is the Earl of Portland
in the palace?”

The porter, though not well pleased to be roused,
replied, with every sort of deference to the air and
manner of the visitor, saying that the Earl was in
the palace, but he believed was unwell.